Prosecuters not taking many terrorist lawfare cases

AP/Houston Chronicle:

The Justice Department increasingly has refused to prosecute FBI cases targeting suspected terrorists over the past five years, according to private researchers who reviewed department records.

The report being released Monday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University raises questions about the quality of the FBI's investigations.

Prosecutors declined to bring charges in 131 of 150, or 87 percent, of international terrorist case referrals from the FBI between October 2005 and June 2006, according to the report. The study was based on the most recent data available from the Justice Department's executive office for U.S. attorneys.

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A Justice Department spokesman disputed the data highlighted by the Syracuse researchers, noting that terrorist hoax cases that were quickly dismissed may have been included in the government data.

Additionally, some cases are referred to prosecutors to obtain subpoenas or other legal orders in investigations that ultimately never result in criminal charges, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said. He said prosecutors rejected 67 percent of FBI international terrorist cases in the nine-month period — not 87 percent.

The FBI's assistant director, John Miller, said the low number of cases prosecuted reflects changes in how investigations have been conducted since the Sept. 11 attacks. He said about half of the FBI's resources go to detection and information gathering of terrorist networks in cases that do not always result in arrests.

"It's not about the numbers and for TRAC to suggest as much is to be intellectually dishonest," Miller said.

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The change from prosecution to detection and prevention is probably the biggest factor in the stats. The more important stat is the number of successful terrorist attacks. Since that number is zero, it suggest that the FBI is very successful. Since terrorist are not usually deterred by legal prosecutions (see the Clinton record on terrorism), it makes more sense to focus on finding them before they can attack. It should also be noted that prosecuting the terrorist requires that the US reveal its sources and methods during the discovery process. This was a great aid to al Qaeda during the Clinton prosecutions.